The music news wires are abuzz about one of the bigger reissue developments in years: the remastering of the Beatles catalog on CD.  This time around, there will be both stereo and mono versions of the albums released.  The stereo discs will be available separately as well as in a boxed set, and apparently, the mono albums (ten of them) would be only in its own collector’s edition box set.  Past Masters will now be a single 2-CD set, rather than two separate discs, and the mono set will have its own equivalent set available.  Release date is September 9, 2009, the same day that the Rock Band video game series will release their Beatles title.

If they get it right this time, this could be the Beatles set to own.  I have all of the original CDs, the Toshiba/EMI “Abbey Road” from Japan, “Rubber Soul” and “Help!” from Canada (which used a different stereo mix than the U.S. CDs), and the U.S. “Capitol Albums” releases.  Hopefully the sound quality will be improved–the original U.S. CDs are harsh.  As long as they lay off the compression and the noise reduction, and poor EQ choices, they should sound fantastic.  The “LOVE” project sounded quite good, and according to the official press release, a lot of thought went into this series.

The full news release can be found at The Beatles website.